Romanian illegally in country allegedly caught stealing more than $80k in Oklahoma

OKLAHOMA CITY - A Romanian, in the country illegally, allegedly stole more than $80,000 in cash from stolen ATM card information.

Dragos Badea was allegedly targeting BancFirst ATMs around the metro area, but the bank security officials were onto him.

According to court documents, BancFirst security knew they were being targeted by a group. Then they spotted "Badea at one of their branches in Moore and Norman where he used fraudulent cards at the ATM."

Other locations were told to be on "on the lookout" believing "Badea was moving north with more fraudulent transactions."

Then, again, he was spotted at an ATM on Lincoln. By the time police arrived, he had already moved on to a MidFirst ATM across the street.

Police found he had used credit cards belonging to at least two Oklahomans. He also had 75 blank or re-encoded Vanilla Visa debit gift cards, and more than $12,600 in cash.

Badea told police he was in the country illegally, travelling from Romania to Vancouver, then crossing into the U.S. to California, and finally arrived in Oklahoma.

Badea admitted the cash "was obtained by conducting cash out transactions with the re-encoded cards at ATMs."